Education in Open Governance in Public Administration

Modern technologies dramatically transform the tools and methods of governance of the public sector and delivery of public services and their availability. This development is reflected also in the tools and form of cooperation with stakeholders, which leads to the reduction of transaction costs. The innovative forms of collective action that are related to complex public policy problems and their solutions, strengthening public knowledge, and replacing traditional forms of public services are a core of the open governance concept. They seem to point to both a wide range of digitally connected actors and the fundamentally different and less visible role of government (Meijer et al., Open governance: a new paradigm for understanding urban governance in an information age. Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, Sec. Innovation and Governance, 1. Available at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsc.2019.00003/full (24.06.08), 2019). The precondition to use these innovative forms effectively requires education and education of public administration employees, as well as knowledge of the concept of open governance. This chapter focuses on investigation of the current state of public administration education of employees that are related to open governance in the Slovak Republic. The pilot research was conducted during the first half of 2023. Respondents were the representatives of public administration authorities at the local, regional, and national levels. This chapter helps to identify the priorities that should be settled for further education of public administration employees in terms of the new trends in governance, which results from digital transformation.